Why I Choose Delphi • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#11

Post by makerightmoney » Tue, Aug 01, 2017, 4:55 AM UTC

delphi is good

Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#12

Post by nurettin » Tue, Aug 01, 2017, 4:58 AM UTC

epx wrote: post #3

I liked Delphi a lot, as I liked Clipper a lot, but technology moved on.

I am glad a lot of people think like this. Less competition.

Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#13

Post by dejv » Tue, Aug 01, 2017, 5:00 AM UTC

xupybd wrote: post #2

Yeah but isn't there a risk of losing support? I work in perl a lot and find it's getting harder and harder to work with modern databases as the dbi driver slowly get bit rot. Is there nothing similar going on in Delphi?

Delphi is a one trick pony. You should use it for writing desktop apps and this area is not that dynamic anymore. For most databases there are bindings or you can use ODBC drivers, for networking there is good enough third party library. Rest of the things you need to code by yourself. There is not vibrant conmmunity anymore, but you might be able to find some answers in old mailing lists and such.

Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#14

Post by skrebbel » Tue, Aug 01, 2017, 5:00 AM UTC

I'm very sad that Delphi is so inaccessible for hobbyists. In some spare hours I'm building a native app in Qt, but I'd have definitely built it with Delphi if I wouldn't have had to cough up 3000 dollars just to get started.

In all frankness I don't get why Embarcadero doesn't copy Qt's licensing. If they make a free GPL version, Delphi-based open source could thrive while just about everybody who buys a license now would still be required to buy a license.

Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#15

Post by problems » Tue, Aug 01, 2017, 5:04 AM UTC

skrebbel wrote: post #14

I'm very sad that Delphi is so inaccessible for hobbyists. In some spare hours I'm building a native app in Qt, but I'd have definitely built it with Delphi if I wouldn't have had to cough up 3000 dollars just to get started. In all frankness I don't get why Embarcadero doesn't copy Qt's licensing. If they make a free GPL version, Delphi-based open source could thrive while just about everybody who buys a license now…

If you're looking for something more Deplhi-like, why don't you just use .NET? Mostly open source now, tons of 3rd party libraries and component packages available for it, just like Delphi in its glory days.

Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#16

Post by Cieplak » Tue, Aug 01, 2017, 5:05 AM UTC

Since Delphi derives from Pascal, it seems appropriate to mention Project Oberon, an awesome OS project that Niklaus Wirth (creator of Pascal) worked on:

http://www.projectoberon.com

If you want to borrow the book, I have a copy in my office in SoMa (2nd and Bryant).

Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#17

Post by vacri » Tue, Aug 01, 2017, 5:06 AM UTC

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #9

taberiand wrote: post #5

Does Delphi justify its cost? As far as I can tell, there are no free compilers - seems like a pretty high hurdle when most languages can be used for free.

If you are doing commercial work the cost is easy to justify. My main concern would be whether you can continue to activate it if Embarcadero drops support or goes out of business.

You'll also have a smaller pool of candidates you can hire, no?

Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#18

Post by loeg » Tue, Aug 01, 2017, 5:06 AM UTC

taberiand wrote: post #5

Does Delphi justify its cost? As far as I can tell, there are no free compilers - seems like a pretty high hurdle when most languages can be used for free.

There are free compilers for Pascal, the language — "fpc" is the Free Pascal Compiler. http://www.freepascal.org/

That may or may not be close enough to commercial Delphi, depending on who you ask.

Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#19

Post by skrebbel » Tue, Aug 01, 2017, 5:07 AM UTC

problems wrote: post #15

skrebbel wrote: post #14

I'm very sad that Delphi is so inaccessible for hobbyists. In some spare hours I'm building a native app in Qt, but I'd have definitely built it with Delphi if I wouldn't have had to cough up 3000 dollars just to get started. In all frankness I don't get why Embarcadero doesn't copy Qt's licensing. If they make a free GPL version, Delphi-based open source could thrive while just about everybody who buys a license now…

If you're looking for something more Deplhi-like, why don't you just use .NET? Mostly open source now, tons of 3rd party libraries and component packages available for it, just like Delphi in its glory days.

Because I want a UI that works on Windows and macOS out of the box.

Plus I want it to have a tiny memory/CPU footprint and while .NET/WPF is better than the average Electron app I still notice a difference.

Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#20

Post by problems » Tue, Aug 01, 2017, 5:08 AM UTC

skrebbel wrote: post #19

problems wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're looking for something more Deplhi-like, why don't you just use .NET? Mostly open source now, tons of 3rd party libraries and component packages available for it, just like Delphi in its glory days.

Because I want a UI that works on Windows and macOS out of the box. Plus I want it to have a tiny memory/CPU footprint and while .NET/WPF is better than the average Electron app I still notice a difference.

Definitely a good reason to use Qt, but you wouldn't get that with Delphi either. Qt is probably the best looking build-once, run with an acceptable UI package anywhere in that market.

EDIT: Just saw your second addition... not so sure I'd agree though, the performance on startup of .NET applications these days is quite excellent and I haven't been able to tell for years, but I've been on SSDs with lots of RAM on recent chips I suppose.